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I had been of the opinion that martial arts were spiritually dodgy. But am finding that my spiritual walk with God has been augmented through the discipline of Aikido.
Anyone else picking up the same mojo?
Just far more in touch with the Spirit, and I wonder if it is due to me becoming more in touch with the inner man. Wonder not such a good term it is fairly obvious. Yeah.

I have a similar experience, although I don't talk about it much, cuz it's a bit hard to explain, and I get some strange looks from others. I feel God speaks to us each in a way we can understand. I feel God speaks to me through martial arts, specifically Aikido. My mind often "dances" aikido moves while I am in church. My aikido experience has made me spiritually stronger.

I heard this one time...God is the perfect warrior.

A warrior can not know war without peace, hate without love, fear without courage, cruelty without compassion. A true warrior knows these things.

Well, not believing in gods means that my budo practice has nothing to do with them, but I do find great peace and satisfaction in my training.

I find the spiritual aspects of budo fascinating, but also find that many of them are more historical/philosophical relics than true spiritual practices. Some exceptions (TSKSR and Kashima Shinryu off the top of my head) exist.

Aikido can be deeply spiritual or can be more rational, but Ueshiba injected a huge amount of his own extraordinary spiritual experience into the art.

I think the mistake some make is trying to re-create his experience rather than seeking one's own.

I think the 'words' people use to express things can be different even when the internal understanding is the same; and the words are less important than the understanding.

Unfortunately, imho, if there exists such a thing as an internal understanding without words (which I doubt very much - with post-modernism and all), it is doomed to remain internal. And that makes these understandings quite irrelevant, because people have no means of direct access to other people's internal understandings.
From the feeling that you never succeed at communicating things and experiences perfectly, I wouldn't conclude that there is some sort of understanding (transcending words) that you failed to communicate perfectly.
Rather, I think that if you remove the words from understanding, not much understanding remains.

p.s. Understanding to me is a mental faculty. I would never say that my body has an understanding of e.g. irimi nage, although my body is capable of doing irimi nage (or al least something that looks a lot like it to the untrained eye. :-))

"I think the 'words' people use to express things can be different even when the internal understanding is the same; and the words are less important than the understanding."

This is a very good point, and the question I find myself asking, which god are you actually referring to when you mention His (or to some, Her) name?

As a christian, my aikido practice (ok, I'm a beginner, but that never stopped anyone having an opinion ), must be devoid of any 'paganistic' practices, and must be an opportunity to glorify God (I need to discuss with my sensei his attitudes towards bowing to the Shomen - can't serve two masters....). Learning how to turn others into human pretzels is a side bonus. Besides, I've been to Rome. Too many pickpockets, and the food is all weird (you know, they don't have deep pan pizzas over there - the pizzas I had could be used as frisbees, or even body armor).